A former diplomat's letter alleges that Pope Francis tried to rehabilitate a cardinal who abused seminarians. But did the writer have an ulterior motive?

August 28, 2018

Sexual abuse by Catholic priests and its cover up by bishops
was always going to dominate
this past weekend’s trip by Pope Francis to Ireland, but the explosive culmination
of the trip with calls for his resignation was a surprise. Late Saturday night,
an 11-page letter attributed to former Vactican diplomat Archbishop Carlo Maria
Viganò was published by a number of conservative
Catholic sites in the United States and Italy. In it, Viganò alleged that Francis
not only knew about charges of sexual misconduct committed by former Washington
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, but that Francis actually helped to rehabilitate the
cardinal after Pope Benedict XVI removed him from public life.

The pope’s critics immediately called for his resignation. His
supporters remain skeptical,
suspecting that the forces that have plagued Francis since the start of his
papacy are again trying to undermine his reform. Sorting through the allegations is difficult: As of yet, there is no clear corroborating evidence.

Viganò, who served as the Holy See’s representative to the
United States from 2011 until 2016, alleges that the Vatican learned as early
as 2000 of rumors of sexual misconduct involving McCarrick and young
seminarians. McCarrick is alleged to have sexually harassed and assaulted
seminarians during his time as a bishop in New Jersey in the 1980s and ‘90s by inviting seminarians to a beach house he owned, forcing them to share his bed,
and pressuring them into sexual situations.

But Viganò uses vague language and euphemisms to describe what
McCarrick did, so it is unclear if he told the Vatican or Pope Francis that he
believed the former cardinal was guilty of abuse.

The Vatican, and specifically the retired pope’s staff,
ignored warnings about McCarrick’s predatory behavior numerous times during the
papacy of Benedict XVI, Viganò says: Memos he says he sent in 2006 and 2008 were
not answered. Eventually, the former diplomat alleges, his warnings were taken
seriously and Pope Benedict XVI imposed sanctions on McCarrick, in either 2009
or 2010, which he says forced McCarrick to move from a seminary where he was
living in Washington and end his public ministry. Viganò also claims that
McCarrick’s successor in Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, was informed of the
sanctions, though Wuerl denies being given information about them.

Shortly after Pope Francis was elected in 2013, Viganò says,
the new pontiff lifted the alleged sanctions, eager to rehabilitate a cardinal
whose more liberal stance aligned with the new pope’s.

Absent from Viganò’s letter is the allegation that
eventually prompted Pope
Francis to remove McCarrick from ministry: In June, the Archdiocese of New
York announced that an allegation that McCarrick had sexually abused a minor
more than 45 years ago had been substantiated. In July, McCarrick resigned from
the College of Cardinals.

Viganò does not say in the letter that he explicitly told
Francis that McCarrick sexually assaulted seminarians; the letter says Francis
asked Viganò his thoughts on McCarrick, and that Viganò told the pope that McCarrick
“corrupted generations of seminarians and priests.” The pope, Viganò says, did
not reply.

The letter goes on to say that anyone who had knowledge of
McCarrick’s sexual misconduct and who did not act—a group he says includes Pope
Francis and Wuerl—should resign.

The letter cannot be dismissed easily. After all, this is a
former high-ranking church official calling on the pope to resign. During his
time in Washington, Viganò would have had access to the inner workings of the
U.S. church, and he is making very specific allegations that can be
corroborated or, in some instances, found to be untrue.

Pope Francis’s record on sex abuse has previously been called
into question, making Viganò’s accusations at least plausible. Francis was slow
to acknowledge sexual abuse by clergy in Chile; he
has been defensive about the church’s current practices in combating sexual
abuse; and just this weekend, he described a prominent victim-advocate, who has
been supportive of the pope’s efforts at reform, as being “fixated”
on the need for the church to hold bishops accountable.

But there are also good reasons to treat Viganò’s claims
with skepticism. For one, a central claim of the letter—that Pope Benedict
removed McCarrick from public ministry—is being questioned.
In 2011, a year or two after Benedict allegedly imposed sanctions, McCarrick
preached at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, ordained priests in New York, testified
before the U.S. Congress and appeared on Meet the Press. The next year,
McCarrick visited the Vatican with other U.S. bishops, where he attended a
birthday party for Pope Benedict. Viganò stood near McCarrick at an awards
dinner in New York in May 2012 and in 2013, McCarrick was seen shaking the
hands of Benedict before the pope abdicated. McCarrick later celebrated Mass in
Washington alongside Viganò.

Then there are questions about Viganò’s motives. The former
nuncio opposes the Francis papacy’s reforms, and he has joined a group
that routinely challenges the pope’s welcoming of divorced and civilly
remarried Catholics to Communion and his (relatively) more progressive views on
homosexuality.

Most of the men Viganò names in his letter also happen to be
his ideological opponents.

In fact, much of Viganò’s letter is devoted to condemning
homosexuality. For example, he claims a “homosexual current in favor of
subverting Catholic doctrine on homosexuality” is to blame in the church’s
current crisis.

Most of the men Viganò names in his letter also happen to be
his ideological opponents. Not least among them is Pope Francis himself, who in
2016 recalled Viganò to Rome, in part because he was unhappy with the nuncio’s
role in arranging
a 2015 meeting in Washington between Francis and Kim Davis, the former
Kentucky clerk who refused to sign a marriage certificate for a same-sex
couple.

Viganò also claims that McCarrick was instrumental in the
selection of three influential U.S. bishops who are seen as allies of Francis,
a charge that could undermine their ministries. Each of them—Cardinal Blase
Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark and Bishop Robert McElroy of
San Diego—released
statements dismissing the letter and calling out factual inaccuracies.

When it comes to sexual abuse, Viganò’s own record is
checkered, which may undermine his claims that his conscience demanded he make
these allegations against McCarrick public. In 2014, Viganò is reported to have
prematurely ended an investigation into allegations that Archbishop John
Nienstedt, a conservative and an outspoken critic of same-sex marriage,
mishandled sex abuse allegations. During that investigation, allegations of
sexual misconduct by Nienstedt himself surfaced, and there are claims
that Viganò ordered that an incriminating letter be destroyed. Nonetheless,
Nienstedt stepped down from his post in 2015.

The timing of the letter’s release also raised eyebrows, as
it hit the Internet just hours before Pope Francis would fly from Ireland back
to Rome. This meant Pope Francis would face the press during his customary
in-flight press conference and that the letter’s charges would dominate the
news cycle, rather than the trip itself—a striking parallel to the pope’s 2015
visit to the U.S., where news of the pope’s meeting with Davis was released
just as the trip wrapped up.

When asked about the allegations during Sunday’s press
conference, Francis said he would not comment. He urged journalists to look
into the claims and to come to their own conclusions. But he did not rule out commenting
in the future.

The allegations raised by the archbishop come at a time when
confidence in Francis’ papacy appears shaky. Sexual abuse in the church is once
again dominating the headlines, and the Vatican seems unable to quell criticism
that it understands the gravity of the situation. But when it comes to victims
themselves, some are accusing Viganò of co-opting their trauma to advance his
own agenda.

As Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest
in Chile, put it in a tweet
on Monday, Pope Francis has work to do when it comes to holding priests and
bishops accountable.

But, he asks, “where was Viganò when it came to do something
for victims? He is just a fanatic who blames gays and represents ultra
conservatives who want power and use survivors as their way to get it.”